Hecuba in A Sentence

    1

    According to Euripides (in the Hecuba), her youngest son Polydorus had been placed during the siege of Troy under the care of Polymestor, king of Thrace.

    2

    In the time of Photius the poets usually studied at school were Homer, Hesiod, Pindar; certain select plays of Aeschylus (Prometheus, Septem and Persae), Sophocles (Ajax, Electra and Oedipus Tyrannus), and Euripides (Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenissae, and, next to these, Alcestis, Andromache, Hippolytus, Medea, Rhesus, Troades,) also Aristophanes (beginning with the Plutus), Theocritus, Lycophron, and Dionysius Periegetes.

    3

    It is obvious from the tales of Hecuba's transformation and death that she is a form of some goddess to whom dogs were sacred; and the analogy with Scylla is striking.

    4

    The tragic story is the subject of the Hecuba of Euripides, the Troades of Seneca and the Polyxena of Sophocles, of which only a few fragments remain.

    5

    When the Greeks reached the Thracian Chersonese on their way home Hecuba discovered that her son had been murdered, and in revenge put out the eyes of Polymestor and murdered his two sons.